The heavyweight champ and Ukrainian opposition leader on why he's firmly in the corner of the Kiev protesters.

Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Vitali Klitschko faced a wall of riot police. The reigning WBC heavyweight champion, six-foot-seven and 250 pounds, was scared. The boys from the Berkut, a special police unit whose name means golden eagle, ignored his pleas to stop and pressed toward an antigovernment camp in Kiev's Independence Square. A similar clash 10 days earlier had turned bloody.